Home Improvement Top Choice for Teens: Bedroom Makeover a Happy Holiday Gift

A RenovatorsPlace.com article, "Renovating Teen Bedrooms," suggests a bedroom remodel may be the perfect holiday gift for a teenager. ABCD Parenting reports that today's teenagers are spending most of their free time in their bedrooms and that may put a bedroom renovation high up on many teenagers' gift lists. RenovatorsPlace.com, an online home improvement resource, has advice and articles available to help parents work with teens this holiday season to enjoy affordable and hip bedroom remodeling.

(PRWeb) December 9, 2006--A bedroom makeover makes a great gift for privacy-hungry teens, according to "Renovating Teen Bedrooms"--an article on RenovatorsPlace.com. According to ABCD Parenting, teens are spending 13 percent of their waking hours--second only to school--in their bedrooms, and RenovatorsPlace.com, an online home improvement resource, suggests this need for privacy may put bedroom renovations at the top of many teens' gift lists.

"Renovating Teen Bedrooms" (http://www.renovatorsplace.com/dsp_articles.cfm?l_article_id=492) elaborates on long-term cost savings and holiday dream-making pointers for parents who want to embark on home improvement gifts for their teens. Ideas include:

•    Granting bedroom design freedom where you can

•    Focusing on inexpensive elements

•    Leaving plenty of room for changing fads

Letting teens remodel their bedrooms is a way to communicate acceptance of a teen's need for privacy and to foster independence. "Parents need to recognize the need for teen privacy, but that's not always easy," says Barbara P. Homeier, M.D. in her article "Respect Teen Privacy." "Some parents understandably, have a very hard time. They may feel that anything their child does is their business. But to help your teen become a young adult, you'll need to grant some privacy."

According to RenovatorsPlace.com, home renovation projects need not bust a parent's holiday-spending budget. In fact, 46 percent of teens report that if they could remodel one thing in their bedrooms, they'd simply repaint it. Plus, teenagers don't mind pitching in some labor to help out. Forty percent of girls and 34 percent of boys say they're prepared to do some of the work themselves, as reported in a national survey of teenagers conducted by Ipsos-Insight. For the work that teens can't or flat-out won't do, parents can find general contractors at RenovatorsPlace.com (http://www.renovatorsplace.com/contractor-directory/index.cfm).

Elizabeth Pantley, author of "Perfect Parenting" and "Kid Cooperation" says, "Many children begin to assert their developmental independence by desiring more authority over their bedroom, which they perceive as the only part of the house that is truly theirs."

RenovatorsPlace.com is an online home improvement resource that provides tips, articles, and local contractor directories. It features interviews with homeowners and photos of their real remodeling experiences.

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